Dignan, I'm with you in shared annoyance at Verizon over their mishandling of the VZW Galaxy Nexus, which I also bought on launch day, and for which I'd also like a proper dock.

I'd say that my solution is to jump ship to a proper Nexus phone, purchased directly from Google. My Verizon lock-in doesn't end until a year from now, so I assume there will be even better Nexus phones coming soon. And, while I wait, T-Mobile will presumably be steadily building out their 4G infrastructure, to which I could then switch with a fully-paid unlocked phone. (Or I could switch to one of their MVNOs.) By then, hopefully all the pieces will be in place. Or maybe if/when the presumed successor to the Nexus 4 is announced at next summer's Google I/O, it will be so extremely awesome that I'll find a suitable way to tell Verizon to take a hike and jump early.

(Or, who knows, maybe Google and Verizon will make nice-nice with each other. Given that Google/Motorola is supplying a significant number of the Droid-branded handsets that Verizon sells, I'd think there's some opportunity for leverage in there.)

I don't particularly find the Nexus 4 to be my ultimate phone, mainly from all the stories of glass cracking, but also from the lack of LTE. Again, this will presumably be hammered out in a year.

I'm curious about whether the bargain basement prices from Google are related to the lack of supply in the market. Certainly, there's less profit there to motivate them to crank up the manufacturing engine and to gamble on the downside risks that come with over-production. (Versus: when will we start seeing fantastic firesale prices on all the unloved Windows RT tablets and when will I be able to boot Android on one?)